Orderly (Worm Semi-SI)

[Obscura]

Neil Pelham:

Neil had been at the hardware store when it happened, trying to remember which type of screwdriver he needed to pick up and wishing he'd just brought the assembly manual with him. The sound of screaming, however, had a way of making end tables, even brand-new and extremely fancy end tables, a lot less relevant to current events.

So did what the man in the parking lot was screaming about. It wasn't the first time Neil had seen somebody clutching their head and screaming for somebody to get "it" out, but this person didn't seem to be high on anything but overwhelming terror. Not that Neil was familiar with all the signs of drug use, not for every single drug, so maybe it was just his first time and he'd had a bad reaction.

Regardless, Neil knew how to handle a panicking civilian.

"Sir, it's alright. I'm Neil Pelham, Manpower. With New Wave? Can you tell me what the…"

---

Neil hadn't expected perfect, instant calm. This wasn't his first time, and it usually took a while to talk somebody out of that kind of fear. It had even been entirely possible that the man would panic, or rather panic more, and explode into violence. He knew better than to expect instant success.

He also hadn't expected the man's head to literally explode.

That was something he didn't know how to handle.

And when he managed to recover enough to call it in, the line was busy.

The line was never busy. Not with how much redundancy was built into the system.

It was then that Neil noticed the sound of distant explosions.


Victoria:

It wasn't often that Victoria Dallon didn't know what to do about a situation.

Drug Dealers? Demand their surrender, then punch'em when they don't comply.

Somebody mad at her? Smile and win them over, or apologise and look contrite, depending on the exact details of who and why.

Muggers? Demand their surrender, then punch'em when they don't comply.

Test coming up? Study hard and then don't worry about it.

Nazis? Demand their surrender, then punch'em when they don't comply.

Dean being a jerk? Storm off and wait for him to apologize.

Weird girls with weird powers suddenly not wanting to be on her team? That had only happened once, but a few quiet probings had told Vicky there was more to the story.

Supervillains? Demand their surrender, then punch'em when they don't comply.

Nazi Supervillain Drug Dealers/Muggers? Demand their surrender, then punch'em when they don't comply.


Okay, there was more to most of her responses than a single pithy sentence, and maybe punching did come up a bit much, and maybe sometimes she overdid things just a bit, but she usually had some idea what she should be doing.

Usually, she wasn't carrying a weird bomb into the stratosphere.

Don't get Vicky wrong, it was definitely better than letting the thing go off in the middle of the boardwalk, with its massive (for Brockton Bay) crowds. It was just that the sinister beeping device had less than ten seconds left on its countdown by the time she finally spotted the thing responsible for disturbing her shopping.

So she hadn't exactly had a lot of time to think and observe before grabbing it and flying up as quickly as she could.


Now that she had a few seconds to think (while racing skyward), she noticed the bomb was, indeed, weird. Lots of wires and vials and complicated stuff, and Vicky couldn't make heads or tails of any of it. It was certainly far more complicated than she would have expected.

Tinkertech. Maybe.

Maybe, just maybe, something that could get past her invulnerability.

From this angle, she couldn't see the countdown.

And that was why she had no idea what to do. She obviously couldn't just drop it, she couldn't just keep carrying it, and

She was still carrying the bomb when it went off.


Every nerve in her body was on fire.

Vicky was too busy screaming to notice the rest of the bombs going off as plummeted towards the boardwalk.


Panacea:

Amy had been relaxing, trying to let a little stress go, if only for a while. It wasn't really working, but that was normal. Amy treasured this time anyway. She didn't exactly have a whole lot of it.

Then she heard the explosions, and knew what she had to do. She didn't know what was going on, not beyond "emergency" and even more violence, but she did know everybody would expect Panacea to respond. That many explosions, ones big enough to be heard from the Dallon home?

There would be a lot of injured, and Panacea would be expected to do whatever she could.

So Panacea got up, threw on her costume, left her room, and stood outside, waiting for pickup so she could heal a bunch of unfortunates caught up in the depredations of supervillains.

Again.

No rest for the wicked.

 

[Lord Sia]

... Damn. Poor Victoria. Flying a tinker tech bomb away from people is way, way worse than throwing yourself on a regular grenade, as demonstrated...

Glory Girl living up to her reputation as a hero.

Let's hope she'll survive the experience.

 

[Obscura]

... Damn. Poor Victoria. Flying a tinker tech bomb away from people is way, way worse than throwing yourself on a regular grenade, as demonstrated...

Glory Girl living up to her reputation as a hero.

Let's hope she'll survive the experience.

Click to shrink...

For a regular person, there isn't much of a practical difference, but yeah, she realised it could potentially kill her while there was still time to save herself at the expense of others, and didn't. That means something. For all that she's a touch cavalier about things like collateral damage and "bad guys" getting hurt, she's still a teenager who regularly puts her life on the line because she has the power to help.

 

[Obscura]

I don't know how long it took before help arrived. Putting the times I do know, such as the start of the press conference, together indicates that it couldn't have been more than half an hour, probably a lot less given how close we were to headquarters, but from the way it felt it could have been a thousand years. Or a minute.

I really wasn't great at telling time without external assistance. Especially under stress. Time dragged on while I was making sure a piece of ex-clothing stayed pressed to a wound with one arm, being squeezed tight by a panicking child who I was trying and mostly failing to hug back with the other, trying not to listen to the screams in the air and trying and totally failing to keep my eyes focused on the man in front of me instead of the surrounding carnage.

But it also felt like no time at all before the guy was being loaded into a PRT van with more haste than really seemed advisable.


It probably should have been an ambulance, but looking around it didn't seem like there were enough of those even for the people who weren't going to make it without immediate medical assistance. At least the PRT van had some of the necessary equipment, and probably at least a field medic or something.

Desperate times, even if I don't know how much time it actually was.

In all likelihood, there would have been enough ambulances, or at least far more ambulances, if this had been an isolated incident, but the continuing sound of further explosions provided a good explanation for what the rest were up to. Or, rather, a horrifying explanation, but it wasn't terribly immediate so I wasn't really thinking about it.

I was stuck on the carnage all around me. Mostly mentally.

Mostly.

Let's not get into details about that. Instead, I'm gonna focus on happier things, like hugs.


There were some. Not enough, not for the situation, but I honestly doubt any amount would have been sufficient. There's a certain amount of depreciating returns involved in the business of embraces, after all, especially if you can't have anything touching anywhere close to your face without screaming.

Not that I was anywhere close to the limit. I had one small set of arms around my waist, courtesy of a little girl who seemed sorta familiar under all the tears and snot and spit now that I could actually look at her, and then, maybe half a minute after the man was loaded up, another more adult-sized arm higher up.

(Don't quote me on that timeframe, but it's probably at least somewhere close to right. Loosely. Look, it was a very stressful situation and time is hard enough at the best of times.)


Alice Stone didn't look so good. She wasn't physically injured, not beyond bumps and bruises (and scrapes and tiny cuts and small burns), but you couldn't have told that from the bloodstains all over her. And that wasn't even the worst part.

She moved like a walking corpse. No grace, no elegance, no life, just limbs lurching gracelessly in approximately the intended direction. She'd never been an acrobat or anything, but she usually ambulated like a person, instead of a marionette.

She moved like somebody who'd seen more than they could bear, like everything of her was too consumed with horror and tragedy to pay attention to what her body was doing. She moved like I would have, if I could have brought myself to do so. Like I had moved, after too many of the events of the past week. She moved like I had after the fire, or on that nightmarishly overcrowded boat trip away from where Newfoundland used to be. Like how far too many people were moving, all around me, like the vast majority of those uninjured enough to do so and able to force themselves away.


Her face was somehow worse, even if the old Jacqueline might not have noticed anything wrong.

Superficially, Alice Stone looked fine. Sober and professional, yes, but that was only to be expected under the circumstances. It was only by looking underneath the underneath that I saw just how much pain there was in her eyes, in the set of her lips, and in the slight but noticeable angle her head was set to.

Well, that and the massive disconnect from her body language. That was a pretty big clue.

Then there was smaller stuff, like the numerous places where parts of her clothing had been ripped off, presumably for bandages. And the sheer intensity with which she looked at me, probably as much to avoid looking at anything else as actual interest. And the way the tips of her fingers were constantly twitching.

It was not a pretty picture.

And, worst of all, she still looked better than anybody else I could see who'd been there when the nightmare kicked off, and there were still a lot of such people around. In all likelihood, she looked better than I did.


Though, like her, I was still keeping up a brave face. I had to.

Even when Agent Alice Stone finally reached me, I couldn't afford to drop the facade. Not with a four year old looking girl weeping all over my already-ruined clothes and clinging desperately to me for comfort.

Instead, I turned around and tried my best to help the woman who'd comforted me in distressing situations a frankly disturbing number of times in the past few days calm down an extremely frightened child. One who definitely needed it. Honestly, I don't think I actually contributed that much, especially since I still couldn't risk opening my mouth, but I tried. That had to be worth something, didn't it?

Genuine question here.


Everything was horrible. So much blood, so much suffering, so much death. So many lives lost, so many forever altered for the worse. Chaos. Slaughter. Pointless butchery.

Ruin absolute and unrestrained and so very, very, immediate despite its distinctly impersonal delivery. Agony, torment, and the worst throes of anguish both present and soon to be. A nightmare far more real than any semi-random firings of semi-random neurons transformed into vague images and sensations could ever hope to be.

And I stood there and took it. I was very good at holding back my emotions when I really had to, and somebody really, really, needed me to. Plus, I was a superhero, expected to be a pillar of strength. Charismatic and inspiring. The sort of person who always has an encouraging smile and an answer for every situation, no matter how dark and terrible. Surely, that meant that something like this didn't hurt too much?

It didn't.

It really, really didn't.

 

[Blacksheep]

All the love for them

May Bakura pay for her crimes

 

[Obscura]

Spoiler: Summary of Previous Arc

The bombs in the park go off, and the place is instantly rendered a disaster area. Jacqueline does what she can, but can't risk using her power obviously because it would likely start a panic.

It becomes clear that the Debut is not the only target, and this is a bombing spree, not a singular incident.

The little girl Jacqueline's aura saved way back in 8-8 appears again, her parents having brought her to see what they assumed was Jacqueline's debut, but she loses them when the bombs go off, and latches on to Jacqueline.

Jacqueline is understandably emotionally affected by everything, and so are all the other characters we see, albeit to somewhat differing levels of ability to cope.

At the boardwalk, Victoria Dallon/Glory Girl noticed a bomb and flew off with it to save the people below, despite realising that it was likely Tinkertech and might be able to hurt her. She successfully protects everybody else from it, but passes out in Tinkertech-induced pain as the rest of the bombs go off.

Devin Wong:

Devin Wong knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but his orders were basically idiot-proof. Pick up the package, drop it off at its destination at exactly 10:30, and leave slowly, without making a scene. The package was clearly marked, with his name and the destination's address printed right there, in big bold letters. He even knew the area he was supposed to be delivering to, which was why he'd been chosen in the first place. Simple.

Except that his instructions came from Bakuda. And Bakuda was, by all accounts, a complete and utter psychopath. He'd heard she'd once killed half a dozen "assistants" in less than an hour, most of them in impossibly horrific ways. Impossibly horrific for anyone else, that is. Because Bakuda had what was basically magic, but was technically Tinkertech bombs, because she was a bomb Tinker and could do things nobody else could. And give Devin orders.

Technically his orders weren't directly from Bakuda. Devin hadn't ever spoken to the woman, nor did he want to, but he had no doubts about where they came from in the end. Chris was one of Bakuda's current assistants, and too terrified of the woman to do anything on his own initiative. Like he'd advised Devin to be, when he ended up with the job.

It bothered Devin that Chris hadn't said "if", but right at the moment the important thing was that Devin's orders were from Bakuda. Which probably meant that the package Devin had in passenger seat was a bomb. That "probably" became "almost definitely" when, at a little after 10:25 AM Eastern Standard Time, he heard the sound of distant explosions. So Devin had a bomb, and orders to deliver it to an address.


An address that, thanks to a happier time in his life, a time before he'd gotten himself mixed up with the Azn Bad Boys, Devin knew to be a clinic. Not a very large or very well equipped clinic, but a clinic nonetheless, one of the few in town that was cheap and didn't require insurance.

A clinic that, for over a decade, Devin had attended. That he'd worked at, if only as a janitor, for a few all too short weeks.

As such, he knew full well that it was probably crowded. It usually was, and weekends were usually the worst. With an ongoing city-wide emergency, one that probably had dozens of casualties at the absolute minimum?

Devin didn't want to think about it.

And he really didn't want to be responsible for blowing it up. On the other hand, he really didn't want to cross Bakuda, especially in the unlikely but still technically possible event that the package wasn't a bomb.

Surely he could just put the package aside, leave it somewhere where nobody would get hurt? If nothing happened for an hour or so, he'd go back and deliver it properly, and nobody would know any different. And if something did happen, he'd have saved a lot of lives.

Devin could live with that.


So, with a couple minutes to go before 10:30, Devin Wong rushed into an abandoned warehouse and dropped off a harmless-looking package. He'd hardly dared enter with all the seagulls and other vermin squabbling inside and around the old place, but he was in a hurry. Then he ran out, pursued by the cries of a territorial mob.

And then, at exactly 10:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time, a warehouse suddenly froze. Devin almost didn't notice, but when most of the cawing ceased he turned around to see birds just stopped, hanging in mid air like some sort of twisted diorama.

The package was a bomb, some sort of Tinkertech, and despite not being the sharpest tool in the shed Devin Wong suddenly knew he hadn't been meant to survive it going off. Did Chris know? Did the lady who'd handed Devin the package? Devin had almost asked for her number.

No, that didn't matter. Not now. Devin had almost killed everybody in the clinic, and that couldn't be taken back. At least he hadn't in the end, but Devin knew he was far from the only ABB associate who was supposed to have delivered a package.

And his boss had tried to kill him.

Devin Wong knew what he had to do. Now where was the nearest police station again?

 

[WallFlower]

Never trust somebody willing to help you with a burglary.
This is why you should always look over you shoulder when working with people with a very loose moral code.

 

[Obscura]

Never trust somebody willing to help you with a burglary.

This is why you should always look over you shoulder when working with people with a very loose moral code.

Click to shrink...

Getting mixed up with the gangs is rarely a good idea, especially in Brockton Bay. Though with Bakuda I'd say she's to the point of either no moral code or one twisted enough to be totally unrecognisable as such.

Sadly, the vanilla mortals in the ABB weren't ready for somebody like her.

 

[Blacksheep]

Happy for Devin making things a little less bad

 

[Obscura]

Happy for Devin making things a little less bad

Click to shrink...

The wonders of thinking things through and having a functioning conscience. Of course, a lot of people in this situation have their fear overruling one or both of those things, so it's admirable that Devin didn't.

 

[Lord Sia]

Sadly, the vanilla mortals in the ABB weren't ready for somebody like her.

Click to shrink...

Unfortunately, Lung spent so long conditioning them to mindless obedience to their Parahuman superiors that, by the time they realised that their boss wasn't "Pan-Asian Yakuza Boss who literally turns into a Dragon" but "Slaughterhouse 9 Candidate", it was too late, and most of them were too desperate to save their own lives to dare defy her.

Also, Kudos for Devin. It takes courage beyond words, and while he might never wear the cape, for today, he was surely a hero.

Let's hope he lives to receive the accolades he deserves.

 

[Obscura]

Unfortunately, Lung spent so long conditioning them to mindless obedience to their Parahuman superiors that, by the time they realised that their boss wasn't "Pan-Asian Yakuza Boss who literally turns into a Dragon" but "Slaughterhouse 9 Candidate", it was too late, and most of them were too desperate to save their own lives to dare defy her.

Also, Kudos for Devin. It takes courage beyond words, and while he might never wear the cape, for today, he was surely a hero.

Let's hope he lives to receive the accolades he deserves.

Click to shrink...

I'd say more "terrified" than "mindless" for their obedience: Lung, like Bakuda, ruled by fear. Bakuda was a lot more blunt about it than Lung was by the time canon rolled around, but they started out by doing pretty much the same thing: they took out all the existing leaders who opposed them and forced everyone else into submission. She's also been taking out the people with more spine, since with the previous leadership gone there's no clear candidate to unite or organise the people who want her gone and they get killed trying to take her out or trying to undermine her. Whether those people are doing it for moral, group-loyalty, vengeance, or pragmatic reasons, they all die the same.

Hopefully, Devin's approach is more successful.

 

[Obscura]

There was something unnerving about Brockton Bay General Hospital. Maybe it was the smell: more than enough cleaning products and antiseptics to burn at the nostril, but not quite enough to cover up the pervasive odour of rot, waste, and bodily fluids. Maybe it was the walls, bleached a not-quite-consistent white. Maybe it was the way I barely remembered agreeing to go there, or the journey itself. Whatever it was, the place felt unreal, like I'd walked into one of those fake towns they use for military exercises.

Well, except for all the seriously injured people, and the frantic scurrying and rapid-fire hustle and bustle of the staff desperately trying to keep up. Those were all too real, like if the people in one of those military exercises were suddenly given live ordinance without warning.

Not quite as much screaming as that, but that was probably because of all the painkillers and sedatives. There were definitely a lot of those in use. Most of them legitimate, probably, but in a city like this you never know.

The difference between the unreal and the too-real parts was night and day. Not your relatively secure urban night and day, with their omnipresent lights and available shelters and hotels: the night and day of the deepest, most arid desert, where the night is liable to make you freeze to death and you'll die of dehydration if the sunstroke doesn't get you first during the day.

Metaphorically speaking.

It wasn't exactly comforting, is what I'm getting at. Even with the ticking and the illusory gears everywhere.


In hindsight, it was probably the trauma and the horrible situation more than anything actually wrong with the building itself, but whatever. I made it to the hospital, got set up with a costume, and I was helping. Making a difference.

Granted, it was a nurse costume, the kind they give kids on Halloween or for plays and costume parties and such, rather than a cape costume, but it was still pretty cute. Everything was fine.


Yeah, I don't believe me either. Honestly, I probably shouldn't have tried it in the first place, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, all those seconds ago. A case could be made that I should learn to be less impulsive with these things, but whatever.

The nurse costume was cute though. Apparently, it was just something the hospital had on hand. For some reason. In approximately my size, even. For some reason.

I asked the guy no questions, so he probably told me no lies.

Probably.

It didn't look anything like what the actual nurses were wearing, so that was fine. Well, the mask and gloves did, but those were actual spare nurse equipment, so it was only to be expected. They were mostly for sanitary reasons. Unlike the long white dress and the perky white hat with the red cross on them, which were just cute.

Unless they really did have something to do with the Red Cross, but that was unlikely.

The bag did have a toy stethoscope depicted on it, but there wasn't one inside, so maybe it wasn't included. Or maybe it just got lost. Not important, the main thing is that it was cute. To be honest, a stethoscope probably would have just gotten in the way, whether it was real or not. Not like I had any use for one.


Mei, which was apparently the name of the girl who'd latched onto me both physically and emotionally, was also cute, once a nurse managed to get her (somewhat) cleaned up and into some non-bloodstained clothes. It wasn't exactly happy, seeing her at her mother's bedside as said mother rested, but the woman would be alright.

Well, she'd live, and without much permanent damage beyond scarring, and that was if she didn't get any parahuman assistance. Since she was in the room with me, with me running my aura at full blast, she'd probably get off without any permanent harm at all.

Aside from psychological trauma. For her, for her still missing husband, and probably especially for poor little crying Mei. It wasn't the first time something horrible had happened to the family, but that didn't really make things better. More likely, it'd make things worse. They needed therapy.

Then again, getting everybody in this town who needed therapy into therapy would have taken a veritable army of therapists even before a massive terrorist attack happened. And I had no good short-term answers for fixing the shortage.


My aura couldn't exactly do a lot for that kind of hurt, probably nothing besides distraction and a certain limiting of the aggravating factors of pain and visible wounds, but I could at least take non-superpowered measures as best I could.

Like hugs.

Hugs are good, and, despite everything, hugging Mei and her mother (the latter very, very carefully) was nice. Even with the tears running down Mei's face. And the tears running down my face.

I ain't apologising.

Well, I'm willing to apologise in general, maybe even a bit more than is really needed. Just not for crying after something like what happened at the debut, even if I wasn't hurt myself. And you can't make me.

Or maybe you can, but if that's the case it wouldn't be worth anything if you did.


Agent Alice Regina Melancholia Stone of the Parahuman Response Team East North East wasn't hugging me, but I could tell she wanted to. She'd done it before we got into that vehicle, I think, and probably before I changed too, but to be honest my memory of that whole sequence of events isn't great. I would have asked her if she wanted to join in, but, well, face.

Face sucks.

Plus my arms were full, so I could hardly use them to indicate things like that. I did try some head gesturing, but that wasn't particularly successful. I don't know if she didn't notice, didn't understand, or just felt awkward about it, but she stayed away.

Then she started talking on her phone, but I couldn't make out what she was saying over the ticking. And the other talking. And the scurrying. And the wheeling. And the moans of pain. And the occasional scream. And the continuing sound of distant explosions. And the other stuff I'm not gonna detail because you get the point.


Focusing on the hugs, and potential future hugs, and past hugs that were still well-remembered, and, more practically, on keeping my aura up was probably a good idea anyway. Definitely better than dwelling on the people who couldn't be saved. Or the people who were still getting hurt and killed in the ongoing explosions and other, less conventional bomb effects. Or the distinctly real possibility that Taylor was dead. Or maybe Danny had been caught in one of the blasts, or Doctor Maina, or one of my teammates, or Panacea had been slain and I was the only heroic healer left in the city (or state, or region), or Emily had been targeted (she was the director, it was a very real possibility)...

Anyway, it definitely beat obsessing over creepy weirdly inconsistently coloured walls.

 

[DracoLazarus]

Hey, new chapter ! Saw it on AO3 first, but eh, details.
Anyway. You're really doing a good job carrying across the angst, terror and low-key panic of the bomb attack and its consequences. I feel for Jacqueline...

 

[Lord Sia]

This continues to hit like a suckerpunch to the gut... But in a good way?

Like I told a friend yesterday; it's amazing how little acts of kindness adds up to make everything better.

I won't say Brockton couldn't use a couple of big gestures of Great Goodness, but what the city really needs is to get back those little things, the ones that add up over time to build the truly great things.

 

[Obscura]

Every grand scale event echoes down, affecting every scale below it, affecting countless people in countless ways. Earth Bet has a lot of grand scale events, and stories tends to focus on those, and not the echoes, at least not for people who aren't superhumanly (mentally) resilient. A massive bombing spree is a devastating thing on every level, TInkertech or no Tinkertech, and I wanted to show that. It's hard to balance, and I'm not sure how well my mood-whiplash heavy style is suited to it, but I hope it's worth it.

 

[Obscura]

I had a lot of patients. I also had at least a decent amount of patience, when I really needed it, but that's not immediately relevant.

Specifically, I had those patients who were just plain willing to trust a random parahuman healer who they'd never heard of before, who I didn't actually have because there weren't any, and those patients for whom the situation was so desperate that they had nothing to lose and decided to risk it.

Or, rather, a mix of what "surrogate decision makers" could be reached and overwhelmed medical professionals decided they should risk it, because, generally speaking, if somebody was conscious and lucid enough to make that kind of decision their health wasn't in that kind of immediate risk.

At the moment, the latter group mostly consisted of the worst victims of the ongoing bombings who were in Brockton Bay General Hospital, meaning the worst of those who were still alive and could actually be transported, including those who were closer to different hospitals but couldn't be saved there.

Plus there were those of the people who were already in the palliative care unit I'd taken over (or been allowed to do my thing in for a while, really) who had presigned general parahuman healing consent forms, meaning all of them. Probably something to do with Panacea, though I don't know if it was because they kept the parahuman-healing approved people separate from the rest or if just every palliative patient hoped, or had somebody hoping, for New Wave's odd power out to cure what ailed them. Could go either way, really.


Oh, and there was also Mei's mom, who apparently had signed consent for my aura specifically, for both herself and her daughter, in advance. That was the clue that finally pointed me to the realisation of just why Mei had decided I was a good person to ask for, or, rather, cling to, for help: I'd saved her life on Tuesday. It was pretty surprising that it'd taken that long for me to figure out, really.

That was pretty memorable, or at least it should have been.

Well, it was memorable, Mei's face just didn't click. Probably because it was distinctly anaemic and unsanguinous the first time we met, and significantly rounder and horrifyingly sanguine the second time. Plus the completely different outfits, attitudes, energy levels, and levels of hugging strength, presumably the result of being physically healthy and terrified rather than exhausted and sick.

Okay, maybe it's not that surprising. It's not like I'd ever had a proper conversation with the kid. Mostly, I'd seen the back part of the top of her head as she hugged me, and that wasn't particularly distinctive. And our second meeting hadn't exactly been under the most calm and quiet of circumstances.


But yeah, the traumatised five year old I'd had to save the life of less than a week ago and her seriously injured (by normal standards, if not by the insane standards of the situation) mother were, by far, the happiest portion of my patient list. (Mei had a boo-boo, she counted. Plus the large number of other small cuts and bruises that she'd picked up running around a bomb aftermath.)

Besides Mei and Mei-Mom, most of the rest of my patients were dying. Probably all of them, or at least all of them probably would be dying without my aura's help. I honestly don't know how many there were, but there were at least twenty in the room with me.

Small comfort though it was, the people in the room with me were at least dying slowly, as opposed to the probably larger number in the operating theatres and other such emergency treatment areas within my radius.

Stars know how many total fell inside the rather precisely defined sphere I'd been told to maintain. Hospital administration, or whoever was in charge of something like this probably hopefully did too, but I certainly didn't.


But there were a lot of them. A lot. Way too many for comfort.

Part of the issue was the fact that there were so many people dying in the first place. A lot of them far far too young, and most of them very painfully. I probably wasn't the most compassionate person in the world, but I had a heart, and it ached for the suffering around me. But that wasn't the only thing.

Next, there was the presence of so many people in a small area. Not just myself and the patients, but also the nurses, doctors, other staff, and what few visitors were permitted. It wasn't claustrophobia or shyness or anything like that. Urban living necessitated at least mostly getting over that sort of issue, at least when it came to just being in the presence of people and not talking to or being looked at by them, and there were different rooms and such anyway, so it should have been fine.

And it was fine, except for the part where my newly bomb-obsessed brain was screaming that we were vulnerable, all bunched up in a tight space like this. An entire badelynge of sitting ducks.


And that part of me wasn't wrong. Brockton Bay General Hospital was a tremendously high value target for the bomber. Lots of people, lots of expensive medical equipment, a valuable yet vulnerable cape if she knew about me, and Panacea was supposed to be coming so another highly valuable yet vulnerable cape. Plus bombing a hospital, one with a whole bunch of children even, would be the perfect cherry for their atrocity sundae, something that pretty much could only be outdone by the use of literal weapons of mass destruction.

Which, horrifyingly, wasn't entirely out of the question. It was possible, not likely but possible, that they actually had WMDs. Tinkers are nonsense at the best of times, and this was far from the best of anything.

And, finally, it would severely hamper emergency response to the situation. Brockton Bay General wasn't the only hospital in town, but it was the largest and the most central. Without it, the system would be massively overstrained trying to deal with something like this. It wasn't exactly babytown frolics as it was.


I'll note that the PRT knew about the likelihood of this place being targeted, and the building had been swept as thoroughly as possible under the circumstances. Plus, it was being guarded by troopers and Protectorate alike. Which I was glad for. Assault might be an inconsiderate jerk, but he was a fairly powerful cape with a fairly solid track record, and I'd heard nothing but good things about Battery.

It just didn't feel like enough. But it was what could be spared, more than what could be spared, so it'd have to do.


Then there was the fact that I had dozens of lives in my hands. I mean, the odds were that at least some of the trauma cases downstairs would have been saved without my intervention, but if they were in my care it wasn't a good sign. So many lives in the hands of a random traumatised fourteen year old girl who happened to have superpowers.

Such things weren't exactly uncommon on Earth Bet, and my powers were pretty much automatic except for the amount of aura I had running, but it was still a lot of pressure.

 

[Skychan]

Anyway, it definitely beat obsessing over creepy weirdly inconsistently coloured walls.

Click to shrink...

Look on the good side, they should slowly be getting fixed to be consistently colored walls? And yes, I definitely would want the healing aura girl stuck on a second or third floor to squeeze in as many patients as possible in this kind of situation. Triage = yes thank you! Even having your surgeons operating within the field is likely a good thing given it seems mostly conceptual in nature and so shouldn't be working at cross purposes with them.

If she makes it long enough I don't doubt a new wing or at least a wing would be retrofit to make better use of her abilities through specific design. Along with cute little arc's on the floor, in stairwells etc, saying things like, "crossing this line grants implicit permission for incidental parahuman healing.

 

[Obscura]

Look on the good side, they should slowly be getting fixed to be consistently colored walls? And yes, I definitely would want the healing aura girl stuck on a second or third floor to squeeze in as many patients as possible in this kind of situation. Triage = yes thank you! Even having your surgeons operating within the field is likely a good thing given it seems mostly conceptual in nature and so shouldn't be working at cross purposes with them.

If she makes it long enough I don't doubt a new wing or at least a wing would be retrofit to make better use of her abilities through specific design. Along with cute little arc's on the floor, in stairwells etc, saying things like, "crossing this line grants implicit permission for incidental parahuman healing.

Click to shrink...

Jacqueline's power is Shard based, same as all the other powers in the setting, albeit with significantly better communication. See 25-1 Indiscernable. Ultimately though it doesn't make that much of a practical difference in that regard. Achronal Engine's loops are always exactly the right thing for AE's goal, and AE's is smart enough to know about surgery and such from Jacqueline. The aura probably isn't as synced up with the surgeon's actions as it could be if Jacqueline or AE knew more, but it's smart enough to stay out of their way while fixing the smaller scale things they can't handle.

The walls are interesting that way, because Jacqueline's power can absolutely fix them, but only if AE knows it's an issue. Which might not be until AE gets the report indicating that they are.

In a sense, this isn't triage at all. Jacqueline's power just flat out bypasses the fundamental problem of triage: she can treat everybody at once. It still applies at a larger scale, and transport is an issue, and some things, especially violence, require more than just the Aura can handle in time, but it's still a tremendous boon. Not least because Jacqueline really isn't in a good place to have to make that kind of decision, emotionally speaking. For things the aura can't do quickly, placing her in a centralised area with as much usable space within her radius as possible makes a lot of sense.

In the long run, she's bound to draw a lot of attention and efforts around her, and those will take all sorts of shapes. Violent injuries and physical trauma like (most of) the bomb victims are actually what she's worst at healing, of the things her power actually works for, by a wide margin, and a centralised area scheme makes sense for those. For things she can do quicker, like diseases, you also need the ability to get people in and out efficiently, and it's not a bad idea even for normal injuries, so there's a certain balance involved that could work out in all sorts of ways.

In the long term, it'd almost certainly be the Guild handling things like that. They're the ones most involved in grand scale non-violent problem solving, for all that the attention gets put on their handling of S-class threats and the like, and Jacqueline's a good fit except for the age thing. Even if she wasn't Canadian, she'd likely be gravitating to them once she's eligible. Unfortunately, there's the age thing, and they likely haven't even heard of her yet. Still, once the two are brought together, great things will happen.

 

[Blacksheep]

I love how silly Shards can be. I know they're harmful, but they're just on the smart side of dumb, enough that you want to cheer them on even as they make awful mistakes

 

[Obscura]

I love how silly Shards can be. I know they're harmful, but they're just on the smart side of dumb, enough that you want to cheer them on even as they make awful mistakes

Click to shrink...

Shards are tremendously powerful, both in terms of abilities and in their processing power, and they combine that with a child-level decision making process and understanding of the human world at best. It's terrifying, and you really have to hope they're trying their best and are willing to learn.

And when they are, it's absolutely adorable.

 

[Obscura]

I needed to do something. Something besides pumping out aura, that is.

Not that I had any better ideas of what to do to help, and it was spectacularly unlikely that there was anything I could do that was better than that, or even anything within my immediate reach that would do more than a minuscule fraction of the good my power was doing, but the aura didn't really feel personal. Not like I was actually doing my best. Probably because I wasn't. Being a clockgirl wasn't exactly effortless, but it wasn't really hard either. Ramping it up took concentration, but maintaining it was mostly just a matter of the right general mindset and a desire for it to keep steady. And I wasn't about to drop out of "please, please, please let the world make sense and be safe again" anytime soon.


Even if I'd never actually seen this world make sense and be safe, this was a lot more dangerous and horrible than usual. A massive Tinkertech bombing spree was head and shoulders above the norm even for Brockton Bay, and at this point the only explanations for the sheer number, variety, and potency of attacks I heard about over Stone's radio (or whatever it was) were a very powerful Tinker, probably with a bomb specialisation or something to that effect, a team of Parahumans substantially larger than every other faction in the city combined, or someone with an absolutely insane amount of versatility.

And those latter two options were both far less likely and much, much worse. I suppose we could have drawn the ire of the Yangban or the Elite or something, but there weren't exactly a whole lot of big Parahuman groups around, and none that were likely to do something like this. After all, this kind of flat out and indiscriminate attack would lead to all out war with not only the PRT/Protectorate/Wards but also all the other groups in the city, all the other enemies big Parahuman groups like that inevitably acquired, and whatever opportunists and just plain outraged people decided to jump on the boat.

Large Parahuman groups don't get that way by being that stupid.

Meanwhile, that kind of single-cape versatility without science-related-memetic-disorder type devices was the sole province of the upper echelon of Trumps. People like Scion, Eidolon, and Glaistig Uaine, or at least those not much weaker. You could count the number of capes that able on both hands, even counting those who were dead or in the Birdcage. One, if you didn't, and you wouldn't be using all your fingers either way. It was possible that one of those people decided to randomly terrorise an entire city, but it wasn't likely, and a new one popping up here was almost as implausible.

Especially one trying to make it look like a bombing spree.

I'd say that one person couldn't be in multiple places at the same time like something like this would require, but that isn't a good guideline with some capes, and especially not for capes at that level. Any really high-level mover could mimic that pretty well, Uaine couldn't be in multiple places at the same time herself but moving her "ghosts" separately from herself was a core element of her combat style, and just because nobody had ever caught Eidolon or Scion being in more than one place at a time didn't mean the two couldn't do it. Even in town, Oni Lee's power did exactly that, even if that "same time" was very short.

But if it looks like a Tinkertech bombing spree, sounds like a Tinkertech bombing spree, and devastates the city and murders its residents like a Tinkertech bombing spree, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to the victims if it isn't actually a Tinkertech bombing spree.


Anyway, I could safely do non-aura stuff while maintaining my aura. And even if the latter was vastly more important in practical terms, going around and doing stuff was important. It would keep me from dwelling on stuff I really shouldn't have been dwelling on, or at least least force me to dwell on it less, and it'd help combat my feelings of helplessness. It wasn't a magical cure all, or anywhere close, but it would do me some good. And hopefully it would do some non-me good as well.

This room in particular could use as much good as it could get.


So I extricated myself from my then-current state of hug and started looking for stuff to meddle in. There was a lot of it. A lot of which I didn't know how to do, but there were plenty of simple yet necessary things that needed doing.

Water needed to be fetched for quite a few people, and it seemed like a place to start. Fortunately there were paper cups and one of those double water fountains with the droppy thingies for filling water bottles in the room, so it was pretty easy. I also applied a bit to my face, after checking it was cool, not warm, hot, or cold, and it did help with the pain some. Mostly though, it was just something I could do, so I did.


I did a lot of things. Once people noticed I was fetching water, they got a lot less reluctant to ask me to do other stuff. Or some of them did, anyway. Some remained quiet behind closed curtains, some weren't conscious, some didn't know what was going on, there were probably some who were all three, and some just couldn't ask, hampered by their various issues and injuries, and there was only so much I could do to work around that. And some presumably just didn't need anything, or at least not anything I could do with my hands, at the moment, and so didn't make requests. Or maybe they were just reluctant. But some did ask for help. Maybe they noticed I was trying to keep busy. Or maybe they just wanted stuff done. It didn't really matter, I did it either way.

Sheets were adjusted, as were blankets. Curtains were drawn closed or opened up, or adjusted into various intermediate positions. Pillows were fluffed. And also adjusted. Lots of adjusting was done, really. Hugs were given. Bedpans were swapped and placed in the proper receptacles. Glasses were put on, or taken off. Things were pointed at, some of which were then retrieved and others of which just needed the pointing. Floors and other things were dried and/or wiped. Comfort was given.

People were helped.


Not much, I'll admit, and in all likelihood most of it wasn't strictly necessary, but if I could make a few peoples' days a little less horrible, I would. It was something I could do, so I did.

Of course, not all of the things done were done by me, not even the things in the above categories. The nurses were too busy for most of those things, what with the ongoing citywide emergency, Alice Stone was busy communicating and coordinating and other "on the phone" type stuff and Mei's mom and most of the other patients were in no state to get up and move around (Mei's mom and maybe a few of the others could have if they really had to, but it would not have been a good idea), but that did leave one particular person.

Small children learn by mimicking the people they look up to after all. Apparently, I qualified, at least in the eyes of Mei. And so, after a period of being stared at, I had a small, almost definitely traumatised, child following me around and trying to help me as I went around assisting people. And also staring at me, but she was hardly alone in that.

She carried an extra cup when I was fetching water. She held things in place as I adjusted other things. She hugged as I hugged, and was hugged in turn as I was. She went to fetch water when I was changing bedpans, even if nobody had asked for any at the moment. She helped point at things when I pointed, and went with me to retrieve things that needed to be retrieved. She pointed at areas I missed when wiping and drying. She helped give comfort.


Mei actually helped quite a lot. Not in practical terms, maybe. She spilled more water than she actually transported, creating the need for most of the drying I did, the holding things in place and the pointing at what I was pointing at were completely unnecessary, and I could see where I missed just fine on my own. But she tried, despite everything, and she was genuinely caring and mostly considerate as she did so. That meant a lot, even if she was also as incompetent as one would expect a five year old to be.

We humans aren't born knowing how to do things, except for a few very specific things, and we learn as we go along. Mei wasn't much direct use now, but she'd get better. Now that she was probably going to live to adulthood, anyway.

She was small, and adorable, and she was trying, striving to move forward and make things better, and that was inspirational. To me, at least, and I think to the patients too. I really hoped I was having the same effect, but the most important thing was that it was being had.

There had to be some light, even in the darkest days.



Author's Note:

This probably isn't the best chapter to come out with right on Christmas Eve. But I hope it isn't the worst either.

Happy Holidays.

 

[Lord Sia]

I think it's the best, actually. Little points of light, driving the darkness back, sparking more light.

Merry Christmas!

 

[Obscura]

I think it's the best, actually. Little points of light, driving the darkness back, sparking more light.

Click to shrink...

We can only hope.

 

[Cthulhu]

Merry late Christmas and a happy early New Year! I feel so bad for all of the little children who were burned and I love Mei and how "helpful" she is. Little points of light indeed.